I'd Call This Love

Part 2: Headphones

"Ricella? Ricella, are you there?"

Ricella glanced up, finding Mr. Suvall standing in the aisle between the desks. "Yes?" she said. She glanced around, and then realized it was 11:30. The class was over. "Sorry," she said, getting up and taking her books with her. "I must have gotten lost somewhere."

She feigned a smile, and then turned to go. Mr. Suvall smiled and waved at her. "Lovely having you in class," he called, and then Ricella pushed out of the door. 

He didn't mean "lovely". No boy or guy ever meant "lovely" when they said it. In fact, if they said something endearing, it was to make people believe they loved you, or it was to manipulate your womanly mind. Women loved compliments and loving words, but from men, they were worthless to Ricella.

She walked briskly down the hallway, and shoved her books back into her locker. She had exactly seven minutes to find her other class, and then she could sit for an hour and read her book because it would be twelve.

The locker on her left banged as she opened her diary and leafed through the pages. Ricella didn't even think about it till she heard a familiar, smug voice. 

"Hey, its the midget."

Ricella's head snapped up, and she was ready for this fight. "I didn't think I'd seen the school Jerk again so soon," she said slickly, slamming her diary and putting it back. "Or am I mistaken? Has the Jerk shrank since this morning?"

She waited, her hands on her hips, and her eyebrows poised high on her forehead. The boy stared at her, but a curving smile that was deliberately conniving spread across his lips. "It was so nice to see you in Art Class, but I didn't know you listened to hard rock in school. I thought there were rules about listening to music over the teachers."

His blue eyes were laughing at her as Ricella found she had lost some ground in the argument. She quickly pulled back a strand of her hair, and planted her feet firmly on the ground. "Does that mean you were watching me instead of listening to the teacher?" She raised her eyebrows farther. "Well, well, we have a crush on our hands! And also, I know every inch of that text book, so I don't think I could have learned anything more from listening. Unless it was the fact that you breath with your mouth open."

His eyes snapped harder as he glared into her face. "So its a crush we're talking about, is it? It seems we are both equal in that, if you were listening to my breathing!"

Ricella smoothed out her most cunning smile. "Oh, only because the whole class could hear it, even when we tried to ignore it."

His face had turned a dark, orange red. "Unless I'm mistaken, I was drinking water most of the class, so I couldn't have been breathing the whole time!"

Ricella glared into his face, glorying in the exchange of words. "Except it wasn't water, was it? It was Monster!"

The boy closed his mouth firmly, and saw the crowd of students that had gathered during their heated argument. Ricella let out a smile, one of relieved and almost breathless victory, then she turned back to her locker and fetched her last book.

"I hope you stay awake well into the rest of the day," she mocked as she closed her locker and headed out. She didn't hear the boy answer, but it was worse when she heard the distant laughter. She expected about forty of the school's students to be laughing at both of them, then she realized it was his laughter.

Ricella turned around, ready to smack him with another line, but she stopped when he shot back at her: "I'll try, but my Anxiety attacks make it hard for me to keep my head clear on days like this!"

Ricella saw her mistake only after he left, still smiling, but she must have hurt him pretty badly. Ricella walked to her next class with a distressed face, but she forgot her confusion when she walked into the Drama Club and saw her teacher, Miss Philips. The woman had a way of making everyone smile, and Ricella tried to forget what had happened between her and the nameless boy.

She took her teacher aside after class, and asked her if she could sit in the empty classroom during lunch time. Miss Philips didn't seem to mind at all, and Ricella set up her lunch box, glad she could stay away from the prying eyes of the endless students, and especially that boy who had Anxiety today, and was drinking Monster to calm himself.

Ricella knew how a person who suffered from Anxiety must feel all the time. She was constantly afraid, not of what people would think of her, but what they might do. Her phone rang as she was finishing her lunch, and she noticed her mother's number on the screen. That meant her mother was off of work for a little while, and that dumb boyfriend of hers wasn't hogging her phone minutes.

"Hey, Mom," Ricella said, wrapping up her remaining food and putting it back in her lunch box. 

"Hi, Ric," her mother said wearily. "How's it been?"

"Fine." Ricella stared out the classroom window. "How about you?"

"I finished my first shift. It was hard. Did you learn anything?"

"No." Ricella couldn't help smiling. "I already knew it all."

"Of course you did," her mother chuckled. "That's why we send you to school," her voice said wryly. Ricella found herself remembering what the "we" meant. Her mother, and that Steven guy.

"Well, you don't have to, you know," she said, wishing she could make it better.

"Yes, we do," her mother said patiently, but Ricella detected the irritation underneath the calmness.

"Mom, I love you," she said quickly, quietly.

The classroom door opened, and Ricella paled to see it was the boy she had argued with, the boy she had insulted. He smiled at her, almost conniving again, then laid his book-bag on a desk and opened it up. Ricella saw the Monster before she even knew what it was, then she froze in her chair.

"Mom, I have to go," she said in perfect calm, sounding more like she was bored than anything else.

"Sure. Okay. I'll talk to you later?" her mother asked, loving and caring.

"Sure. Yes, of course," Ricella said, very distracted as the boy sat down, leaned his chair off the two front legs, and put his feet on the table in front of him. He was grinning at her, taunting her to come over and decide to tell on him for drinking Monster on school grounds.

Ricella slowly hung up her phone, and set it down on the table next to her lunch box. She wondered how he had found her as she stared at her hands for awhile, then she slowly got up and pushed out her chair. She walked straight over to the boy, and stopped beside his chair. He looked up, his blue eyes telling how only too eager he was to continue their game of arguing and who would win.

Then Ricella sat down, and put her hands on the table. She wasn't ready to surrender, but she had made a false move, and she was going to amend for it. This boy was a hateful male species, and she was ready to kill him on a moments notice, but she pitied people who suffered what she did, even if it was a clinical point of view, not a state of life.

"Still suffering?" she asked kind of quietly.

The boy looked at her boldly, trying to guess her out. Then he rolled up his sleeves and his piercing eyes looked at her. "I never suffer, but I do notice you're always suffering. From what? I always wonder. Maybe too much metal in yours ears."

All of Ricella's sympathy and atonement vanished. He meant the music she listened to, and that was something Ricella couldn't stand! "Metal in my ears! What about all the metal in your heart? No mercy, no sympathy, no care for the people around you! All boys are the same! They're all like you! Selfish, disdainful, evil, conniving, and so preciously rare does one even fall in love for real! Only my dad, but the good ones always die young!"

She had said too much. Ricella suddenly realized she had stood up while she was yelling, and she made herself sit down again. She knew she shouldn't have mentioned her father in the mess, but now this boy had information, he had junk to use against her. Ricella fumed with her arms crossed, making herself look at him.

The boy didn't say anything, then he slowly lowered his feet off the desk. Ricella found herself weak all-of-the-sudden, ready to start crying because she had dared open herself up for more pain. It had been one of her promises to herself that she would never speak of herself, her past, her family, or her own feelings to anyone. She had just done practically all of them. She had voiced her opinion, and now it was up to this dumb boy to ridicule it.